Senegal - seventeenth State
Signatory to sign Facility Agreement

A Facility Agreement with Senegal was signed yesterday by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Senegal, General Mohamadou Keita, and the Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission, Wolfgang Hoffmann. The ceremony took place at the Preparatory Commission headquarters in Vienna. Senegal is the seventeenth State Signatory to sign such an agreement.

The Agreement grants the Preparatory Commission the necessary legal authority to undertake work on Senegalese territory on an auxiliary seismic station in Mbour (AS 97) and to ensure its maintenance and operation. Senegal hosts this station as part of the International Monitoring System (IMS) to verify compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The CTBT, signed by Senegal on 26 September 1996 and ratified by it on 9 June 1999, recognises that halting all nuclear-weapon-test explosions is an effective step towards nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. Under the Treaty?s global verification regime, a network of 321 monitoring stations - spanning some 90 countries – is being established. This network can register shock waves generated by nuclear explosions and other sources in the atmosphere, under water or under ground, and can detect the radioactive materials created by such explosions.

The IMS consists of 50 primary and 120 auxiliary seismic stations whose data can help distinguish between possible nuclear explosions and the thousands of earth tremors registered annually. A further 60 infrasound and 11 hydroacoustic stations will monitor vibrations in the atmosphere or under water that may result from a nuclear explosion. The IMS also includes 80 radionuclide stations to sample radioactive material which may have been released during a possible nuclear explosion and, in addition, 16 laboratories to assist in the analysis of samples. The monitoring stations transmit data to the International Data Centre in the headquarters of the Preparatory Commission in Vienna, where the data are used to detect, locate and characterise events. These data and IDC products will be made available to the States Signatories for judgement.